I PREFACE HE desire to write this book arose out of my teaching. Listening to many essays on Homer, I came to feel that the undergraduates who wrote them were being im· pelled, by the books and articles they read, in the direction of a dryness which did less than justice to the Iliad and Ot[yssry. Mycenaean land-tenure, Bronze Age archaeology, the intricacies of formulaic phraseology: these special and technical questions seemed almost to squeeze the poems out. The conse· quence was that I began to lecture on Homer myself. I owe many debts to the work of many predecessors and con· temporaries. Some personal obligations it is a particular pleasure to record. Mrs. M. Bugge, Mrs. C. Ross, and Mrs. L. Smithson typed the manuscript with accuracy and good humour. My thoughts on Homer have been sharpened by many arguments with my Balliol pupils, who have often made me think again. My colleague Dr. Oliver Lyne read the proofs with a sharp eye, and not only for typographical errors. Pro· fessor Hugh Lloyd-Jones, with characteristic generosity, has given me the great benefit of his acute and learned .criticism, and also of his stimulus and encouragement. To all of them I should like to express my lively thanks. T Oiford September, 1979 J.G.

I ABBREVIATIONS AJP A undA ANET AOAT ARW BICS CAH CJ CQ GRBSI. HSCP HZ JHS NJ6b. American Journal qf Philology Anlike und A6endland Ancient Ntar East<m Texis related I<J the Old Tellament Alt<r Orient und A/In Tellamenl Archiu j/Jr &ligioll$wim11$c/uifl Bulletin qf the [11$litul< qf C/assital Studi.,, London Universi!)l Cambridge Ancient Hist<Jry Classical Journal Classical Qpart<r{y Greek, Roman and ByzantiM Studies Haroard Studies in Classical Philology Hist<Jrische Zeilschrifl Journal qf Hel/mic Studies New Jahr61kher (the title has been extended in different ways at Philo/. Philo/ogus &ow dos ltiudes GrtcqlllS Rheinisches Museum Transactions of the American Philological As.rociaiUm WieMr Studien Warz6urger Jahr61kher rate Classical Studies different times) REG Rh.Mus. TAPA ws WaJ66. res In referring to the text of the Homeric poems, Arabic figures mean the Iliad, Roman figures the Ot/yss!)l: thus 7.64 means the sixty-fourth line of the seventh Book of the Iliad, but vii.64 the corresponding line of the Odyss~. The translations from Homer are the author's adaptation of the Iliad venion by Lang, Leaf, and Myers, and the Otfyssey of Butcher and Lang; and in some cases his own. Translations of the Scholia, never previowly translated into English, are by the author.

I INTRODUCTION obody who writes on Homer has read everything, ancient and modern, that has been written about the poems. Each of us finds some more suggestive and helpful, some less, among the works of his predecessors. A feature of this book which perhaps deserves comment is the little that is said in it about theformulaictheoryofthe poems' composition, which since the work of Milman Parry has, in the last forty years, increasingly dominated discussion in English. Impressive as this large body of work has been on its own technical ground, I am perhaps not alone in feeling disappointment at the amount of light it has shed on the poems themselves. I think that it has been made very likely that the Iliad and the Ot[)lssey represent the end of a tradition of oral poetry. That has some importance, as suggesting a line of explanation for some features of the poems: the repeated lines, the fixed and recurrent epithets, the typical scenes. Negatively, it rules out certain kinds of nineteenthcentury analysis, which by pressing on verbal repetitions and minor inconcinnities dissolved the poems into fragments; it also should make us cautious about basing other kinds of argument on such repetitions. It serves, that is to say, as a check upon subjective approaches, but it does not and cannot rule them out in principle. Even if the poems represent the end of a tradition of oral poetry, that does not tell us how the epics which we have were produced. It has been claimed that 'at a deeper level, all literary criticism of the Homeric poems must be radically altered by the Parry-Lord hypothesis',' and even that a new 'oral poetics' must come into existence before we can, without absurdity, presume to tackle the poems at all.• But the production of a new 'poetics' has proved difficult, and some recent writing on N 'C. Moulton, Similu iol/11 Honuri& PotmS (1977), to. e.g. J. A. Notopoulos in TAPA 8o (1951), r, 'Homeric acholanhip must realize that the time has come to Jay the foundations of a literary criticism, non· Aristotelian in character and emanating mainly from the physiognomy of oral literatwe, which dill'en in style and form from written literature.' Foundations which emanate from physiognomy; the style ill new indeed. 1

J INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION formulaic utterances has contributed less to our aesthetic understanding than might have been hoped. The late Adam Parry, in the valuable introduction to his father's collected papers, wrote, 'To the scholar with literary interests, or to the student or lover ofliterature in general, the whole argument may appear so narrowly technical as to miss somehow the fundamental issue, which is the poetry of Homer •• .' 3 A too exclusive attention to such questions has also led some scholars to disregard valuable work done in a different tradition. On the other hand, the whole conception of oral poetry as in its nature quite different from written poetry is coming to seem less and Jess tenable. Ruth Finnegan, in her book Oral Poetry (Cambridge, 1977), shows how the sharp distinction, on which the demand for a new poetics rests, is eroded by study of the actual material: 'There is no clear-cut line between "oral" and "written" literature' (p. 2), and 'The hope for a precise generalisation about the nature of oral style of the kind that Magoun, Parry and others have envisaged is, in my opinion, bound to be disappointed' (p. 130). We shall, I think, have to go on with aesthetic methods not essentially or radically new, observing caution and avoiding arguments which are ruled out by an oral origin for the work, but approaching the epics in a manner not wholly different from the way in which the Greeks themselves approached them. The ancient world has, in fact, proved a much more fertile source of lllumination than modern Yugoslavia. First, the vast mass of Greek commentaries on Homer has proved to contain, along with much unrewarding material, many acute and suggestive points, and of these I have made more extensive use than most recent writers. Besides their intrinsic interest, they have a certain value as a check on our own views: if we find support for them in the work of the ancient commentators, then that tends to show that they are so far not anachronistic, that they made sense at least in later antiquity. Second, the ancient literature of the Near East has produced parallels. It seems pretty clear that Homer and Hesiod were influenced from Eastern sources :• such influence made itself felt both before and after the 'dark age' of isolation from the Levant, which recent scholarship has tended to regard as a shorter break than used to be thought.• On the level of myth, the stories of Uranus, Cronos, and Zeus, familiar to the poets, derive from Hurrian and Hittite sources; the conception, vital to the poems and alien to later Greek religion, of all the gods as meeting together on Olympus, resembles the picture we find in the literatures of Mesopotamia and Ugarit. The Old Testa· ment, too, has proved a more rewarding source of comparative material than seems to be usual. It is something of a paradox that the existence of the large, valuable, and convenient book, Ancient Near Easltrn Texts related to t!18 Old TeslaiiUnt, edited by J. R. Pritchard (third edition, 1969), has tended to lead Greek scholars to quote from it and consequently to omit the Old Testament itself, a collection of writings which is influenced by other Near Eastern cultures, • and so not less relevant than the others; besides containing works of higher literary quality and interest. It has seemed particularly interesting on the question of the reality and seriousness of Homeric religion. There are also a certain number of parallels with Germanic and Irish literature. The aim here, as with the Eastern material, is to bring out, by comparison and contrast, the specifically Homeric character. Motifs and conceptions which are at home in related or adjacent literatures must undergo a characteristic transformation, to become adapted to the unique atmosphere of the Homeric poems. By such comparisons it is possible to gain an insight into that atmosphere. xiv 'In Milman Parry, 1M Makin& qf Hollllri< Vmo (1971), I. On the Yugoslav material, salubrious reservatioDII in F. Dirfmeier, Deu mllokrotJiiscM H11dm1Ud und Homn, SB Htidlll"'l• 1971; sec also A. Dible, H.,.Pro/J,..,. (1970), 49 ff. 'For all the proliferation of comparative atudic:a, Homer remain~ a very special case', is the judicious conclwion orj. B. Hainaworth,JHS go (1970), g8. 'The ruling theory or the day (oral poetry) explains only hair', 18fll B. C. Fcnik, Ho,.., TradiliDn and /rwmtion (1978), go; perhaps atill a gencroua estimate. XV • e.g. T. B. L. Webster, From M)"'IMI to Homer (!:!nd cdn., 1964); P. Walcot, Huiad tmdth. Nollf' Easl (tg66); A. Leaky, Gosa-114 Schriflm, 356, 400; F. Hcubcck, Dio h.....Ucho Fr"'l• (1974), 167 ff.; and recent works or W. Burkert: 'Von Ameng. phis II zur Bogenprobe des Odysseus', GttWr B.Ur6go, 1 (1973), lig--78; 'Rdep· Figuren', ibid., 4 (1976) 51-&l; Grilcllirclu Roli,ion dor art:!Mirchm und Alanirchm Epocllt (1977}, esp. pp. 282 fl'.; 'Das hunderttorige Theben und die Datierung der llias', WS 10 (1978), 5-ot. L.A. Stella, TradidDnom~ol!laopoo.U.doll' Jliado(1978) also deals with this question. 'A. M. Snodgrass, Tht Dllf'k Ago qf Grouo (1971), 038 and 046, argues that Greece was really cut off from the But for Jess than a century, between •the extreme outer limits oC 1025 and 9.50 uo'. ' See ror instance Th• Cam!ridg1 HisiMy qf liz• Bihll, I ( 1970), 68 ff.

'l' ! / xvi INTRODUCTION Lastly, I have been able to find much that is congenial and useful in the work of recent German writers on Homer. There are signs that in Germany the oral theory is at last catching on; we in turn, I think, have tended to neglect a body of work from which we have much to learn. In an area. in which the question of authorship and origin has so often dominated discussion, even to the point of eclipsing the poems themselves, it may seem almost provocative that I often talk of 'the poet' or even of 'Homer'. In part this is a form of shorthand: I want to discuss the poems, not to express on every occasion.3 view on their creation. But it also rellects my belief, which I hope this book will explain and justify, that the Iliad is a unity in a deeper sense than is sometimes allowed, embodying a clear and unique vision of the world, of heroism, and of life and death. If that is granted, then it is hard to imagine such a vision as anything but that, essentially, of one man; and it may be felt that we cannot separate from the greatest Greek epic poem the name which antiquity regarded as that of its greatest epic poet. The Ot{)>sse;, too, has a charac· teristic atmosphere of its own, which I have tried to define in contrast with the Iliad; and it seems natural to regard that poem also, despite the difficulties of its second half, as shaped by one coherent and powerful imagination. I SYMBOLIC SCENES AND SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS The magic meaning of many objects is often closely connected with their symbolic significance ••. it is onen an imposaibility distinctly to divide the magic and symbolic significance.• HE poet of the Iliad created a poem larger in scale than the ordinary epics of his time, and he organized and unified it on a different principle.• Instead of a straightforward narrative of an obviously significant eventthe war of the gods and the Titans, the whole Theban War, the Capture of Troy-he took a theme which commenced in the middle of the war and ended before its conc).usion. The wrath of Achilles and its consequences are made to represent the whole story. In Books 2-4 we see a repetition of the beginning of the war, with the first advance of the Achaeans,8 the duel of Paris and Menelaus, and the sin of Pandarus which outrages the gods and dooms Troy again. • The death of Hector is made to stand for the fall of Troy itself; he alone defended Troy (6.403), and at his death 'it was most like the fall of the city, as if all lofty Troy were ablaze from top to bottom' (22.410 If.). Such a conception, sophisticated and far from ob· vious, naturally implied that the poet would create and em· phasize incidents which had a further significance for the poem t F.J. M. de Waele, Th• Magi< StJJ.ffor Rod (1927), 23. T • On Homer and the Cycle see my 'The Epic Cycle and the Uniqueness of Homer',JHS 97 (1977). The 'clisreuions' in the Iliad are paradigmatic and highly relevant: N. A111tin in GRBSI. 7 (1g66), 295-31•. 'It ill evident from !1.78o ff. with the we of a goddess to announce the Achaean coming, from her words (!1.796), 'You are talking as you wed to in time ofpeacc, but war is upon us, unavoidable ••. I have never seen such an army .. ,,, that what we have is, in some sense, thefirst Achae8n onset. The light-hearted challenge issued by Paril, 3 init., also implies that he hu not had ten yean' experience of the Achaeam in war. • H. FrAnkel, W1g1 und Fomun, 3i Codino, lntrodu:iont, 52 ff. Adam Parry, n;s 20 (tg66), 193, apeab of ca succession of acencs comprehenaively evaluating the human situation'.

I • SYMBOLIC SCENES AND SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS SYMBOLIC SCENES AND SIONIFICANT OBJECTS than their mere matter off11ct happening. The death of Hector is a case in which he has made this significance explicit, and that is important; it confirms that such ideas are not over-subtle and inappropriate to the criticism of an oral epic, but on the contrary were clearly entertained by Homer himself. But more often he does not express the significance of such events in this way, leaving it to his audience to understand it. I take an example which, though not spelt out explicitly, must have such significance. When Hector was killed, Andromache was at home, fulfilling her wifely duties, as Hector had told her when they parted'Go home and attend to your own work, your weaving at the loom, and give orders to the servants to get on with their work; as for war, that shall be men's concern, and mine above all.' Obediently she was weaving and ordering a hot bath for her husband on his return; disturbed by the shrieks from the wall, she rushed up and saw Hector dead, dragged behind Achilles' chariot. She swooned, and as she did so, 'far from her head she threw the bright ribbons ••• and the head-dress which golden Aphrodite had given her on the day when Hector of the shining helmet took her as a bride from the house of her father Eetion'. This is obviously not a mere fact; Andromache, whom we have just seen happy at her wifely work, has lost her husband and her marriage, and she casts down the head-dress which be· came hers on her wedding day, a vivid symbol of her loss.• As Schadewaldt points out, the pathetic touch at the end of her lament is of the same sort: 'Now worms will eat you ••• when the dogs are sated with your Resh, lying naked; while in your house there lie many fine clothes, the work of women's hands. But now I will burn them all-not to benefit you at all, for you will not lie in them, but to glorify you in the sight of the people of Troy' (22.508-14)• The well-kept clothes stand fur the good housewife and her care of her husband. Now, though she has lovingly looked after his clothes, he is naked, exposed to carrion beasts, and the garments which were the embodiment of her love have lost their meaning and can go into the fire. We must observe here how deftly Homer makes a point. In practice early Greeks did believe that the purpose of burning the clothes of the dead was to give them to the dead man to wear in the other world-the same natural conception as led them to give him a sword, or his favourite dog, or his servants, or food. 0 Homer, anxious as he always is to underline the absolute separation of the world of the dead from that of the living, will have none of this. Hector will derive no benefit from the burning of his clothes, and purely psychological motives replace superstition. Andromache shows the richness of Hector's household and the completeness with which her own life is destroyed; the Trojans admire, and the act is one of heroic glory.• The examples I have chosen are of course fairly evident to any sensitive reader. In such scenes we see a gesture or a tableau which brings out fully the implications and importance of events, and we observe the poet using simple acts or physical objects (a head-dress, a man's clothes) to convey the emotional significance. This technique is in fact pervasive, not only in the Iliad but also, in a rather different way, in the Otfyssey. I shall first exemplify and discuss it, and then go on to some of its connections and implications. Clothing lends itself very well to being used in this way. At the beginning of Iliad 3, as the two armies approach for the first time in the poem, Paris 'stepped out as champion in front of the Trojan ranks, wearing a panther skin over his shoulders, 1 'Go home', 6.4go; Andromache at work, oo.440; her hcad·drcso, 00.468. W~rk,' 331, on 'unwillkllrllcbe Symbole'. I do not agree with M. N. Nagler, S~ 11114 Trodilion (1974), 49 that what u symbolized here is 'that feeling ofaexual violation 10 remonelealy developed in the Trojan playo of Euripidea'. The fact that old Hecuba, too, throws off her veil, u.4Q6, certainly doca not aupport this gratuitoua notion, which Homer ill careful to exclude from what he oayoabout Andromoche'o deatiny, cf. 6.454 ff. and 04-707 ft 'It meam it wu a love match, and the bride wu beautlful',says M. M. Willcock of the head-drcsogiven by Apbrodltc, BIGS' 17 (1970), ~o; I prefer the comment of the oehollaot, XT in 468: clr 1""11'~• njr 1ra.<U&r rtl8cul"'•l4• M.wr TiJ l""a.floAfi a~t>l"71.-a• 'be reminda uo of her former bappinea, oo that by means or the change he may increase the pathos.' Compare the perceptive com· men~,XT in. oo.soo on the name Aatranu: Td d,d "i• <d8cu,...•lar ao!Ttjl Gvo,.... Myouaa ,M•••z ..... Kal l'lr<JJIM"''fld··· am&, 'She acbievc:s a more pathetic efl'ec:t by •peaking the name given to him from his prosperity; and abe repeatl it' (ac. at so6). W. Schadewal!lt, Yon H01111r1 Will 11114 or,..,.••, """pel" .r,., t,....... . 3 ' TheiMu d<Wi<lu u Herodotus s.go, o, the burning of clothes for the dead wife of Periander, who complained that abe waa cold and naked in the next world; cf. E. F. Bruck, To""ltil 11114 S.tft~rlll, oB, E. Weiss, Gr. PriDotr~ehl, i, 1<j6. ' lo the same way buman sacrifice to the dead PatrociUI ia presented by Homer as an act of purely secular revenge, r8.ga6, sn.27, 2,9.2111, 175; the victiiDJ are pathetic (01.07 ff. and XT in 01.31), Achillcspaaionatc in anger.

I 4 SYMBOLIC SCENES AND SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS SYMBOLIC SCENES AND SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS and his bow and sword •• .'. He challenges the Achaean chiefs. Menelaus accepts with delight-and at the sight of him Paris is intimidated and slinks back into the ranks; 'as when a traveller is confronted by a serpent ••• so did Paris, beautiful as a god, start back in fear from the son of Atreus.' Before the appearance of Paris, two immediately preceding passages have made the same point. At the end of Book 2 the poet introduced the Carlan leader Nastes among the Trojan allies, 'who went to war wearing gold like a girl, the fool; that did not ward off grim death, but he was slain by fleet-footed Achilles in the river, and he took his gold.'' The death ofNastes is not actually mentioned in Book 21, but this single allusion characterizes him with deadly finality. Then the armies are described (3.1-9). The Trojans advance with screams and cries like those of birds, but the Achaeans 'in silence, breathing prowess, resolved to stand by each other'. The passages reinforce each other. Trojans are seen, as soon as they appear in the poem, as gorgeous, frivolous, noisy; Achaeans, by contrast, are serious and grim. This contrast will be carried throughout the poem, as the scholiast observes: 'He characterizes the two armies and does not depart from the representation all through the poem.'• Trojans propose duels, Achaeans win them. (Books 3, 7). Trojans are gorgeously dressed: Euphorbus, slain by Menelaus, 'stains with blood his tresses like the Graces, and the love-locks he wore plaited in silver and gold' (17.51). Their gait, even, marks them as what they are-the boaster Othryoneus is hit 'as he stepped high' ;10 Polydorus 'in his folly was showing off the swiftness of his feet, racing between the front ranks, until he lost his life' at Achilles' hands. Asius calls Zeus a liar, Othryoneus promises to drive the Achaeans way from Troy single-handed, Hector hopes to kill Achilles: 'If Achilles really has risen up from the ships, so much the worse for him; I shall not run away from him-no, I shall stand and face him, and either win great glory or be beaten •• .'11 Paris, having challenged Menelaus, must be shamed by his brother into fighting and then be rescued by a goddess; Hector, after his stirring boast, will be unable to face Achilles and run for his life. This pattern is vital to the Iliad, it is no mere Greek chauvinism. The Achaeans win the war because their discipline is better, as we are told explicitly; their silence and obedience to their commanders go with this. The Trojans lose because they are the sort of people they are--glamorous, reckless, frivolous, undisciplined. And the archetypal Trojan is Paris. He can fight well when he feels like it, but often he will not; he goes out to war at the beginning of Book 3 wearing a leopard skin, and so he has to change into proper armour before he can fightand we are to supply the reason: because he looked glamorous in it. Hector reproaches him with his excessive good looks, his music, and his seduction of women, and Paris replies that 'the gifts of golden Aphrodite are not to be despised.' 11 This is the Paris who is whisked away from the battlefield by the goddess, and who, while Menelaus searches for him to kill him, is waiting for Helen, at home in his bedroom-'radiant with beauty and dressed in gorgeous apparel. No one would think he had just come from fighting, but rather that he was going to a dance, or had just done dancing and sat down to rest.' 18 Now, Paris it was who doomed Troy by choosing Aphrodite and the life of pleasure;" and since Paris is the archetypal Trojan, the sin of Paris is one in which Troy is inextricably implicated. They may 'hate him like death' (3.454), but they cannot get clear, just as Helen now hates and wishes to be rid 1 Paria ateps out, 3·1Si be alinb back. 3·3Si Naates, a.872; cf. in the Nibliui';mIUd, a dashing young Hun, 'dressed out in hil finery like a young wife of the nobility•. He il at once killed by Volker, who •thrwt his spear clean through that gorgeously tumed..ut Hun' (p. 234. Pensuin Irani,). Such warri011 exiat only to be alain by proper heroes. A aimilar eonlralt b made between the French finery and the Engi.Uh •warrion for the working day' in HID1] Y. . in Gp+w 3l,.clr DTpGTcclr 3oanmot p.l.)(p&Tl>.ovr o~1< ToO if9ovr. C£, for inltance, G. Finder, H.,.,, '·'42• W. H. Friedrich, l'n· wundung untl Tod in dtr lli4s, ••· " Euphorb..,, t 7·.i' j pthryone111t 13,37 t; 1<11! {IJ)..rv 61/io P,Pti.VTG 'Ttll(.tlw, with L'b oiKctovTtjl ~'{niArxppov• KaiTd (3d6wp.11;. 'even hil galt b appropriate to hil arrogance.' Deiphobua, too ( t 3· 156), 'otrides aloos, full of pride, oteppins Ughtly on hb feet and advancing under hil ableld'. Contrut the gait of Ajax (7·•••): 'with a grim smile on hb Cace he advanced with great strides', and X ad loc.: 'The mov~ent of hb body sbowa the courage of hil heart.' ':ET s.• '"'I ltlDT"""' " Eustatblua, "44·3•• rightly point> to the eohoin t8.305 of 18.o7B,Ttjl8' d.ywv af tl l91Anaw. He calla it an dtn•wJMlr, a piece of wit. Polydoi'WJ, 204ro; Alliua, 12.164; Othryoneu:t, 13·3671 Hector, tB.sos. u Achaean dUcipUne, 17.364; obedience, 3 inil., 4·430; Paril, 6.520; Hector reproaches Pari!, 3·54• Those who find fault with Hector in the poem may call him •too good looking', 17.142; even Hector, admirable as he is in some waya:, is otlll a Trojan. 11 3·39•-4· A good diJoU!olon In W. F. Otto, Th• Honrmc GeM, g611'. u K. Reinhardt, DIU Parisurldl -= TrDdilibn und Gtisl, 16-36. 5

I SYMBOLIC SCENES AND SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS SYMBOLIC SCENES AND SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS of him, but still finds herself forced to go on sl~eping with him (3.395-420). In Book 3 the poet shows us Paris in contrast with Hector, and both of them in their relation with Helen in Book 6. In the latter book he shows us also the contrast be· tween the false marriage of Paris and Helen, and the true marriage of Hector and Andromache: on the one side a liaison based on pleasure, guilty and sterile, in which Helen wishes Paris dead; on the other the loving parents of a child, where Andromache tells Hector he is the one thing in her life, and he speaks nf love and duty. These scenes are all representative. This, we see, is how these people always were, this is the meaning and underlying pattern of events, We see what Paris is doing to Troy, what Hector is, and what his death will mean. The ancient commentators remark regularly on Homer's 'graphic' power, his skill at producing memorable visual scenes,u and certainly this is a characteristic of Homeric writing which strikes the audience at once; but these scenes are more than simply vivid. Again we observe that physical objects are used by the poet to achieve his effects of significance. When Hector comes to call Paris back to the fighting, he meets in turn the three women who love him, his mother, Helen, and his wife; each of them tries to get him to stay with her and not go back to the battle." Hecuba, a true mother, offers to fetch him a drink; Helen invites him to sit down and talk with her. Andromache urges him to stay with her on the wall, or his own reckless courage will leave her a widow and her child an orphan. All three represent the same temptation, in nicely calculated variety and crescendo: the temptation to turn his back on the terrible world of fighting and death, and linger in the delightful company ofloving women and their plausible justifications. The drink offered by Hecuba, the chair set by Helen-these em body the attractiveness of yielding to feminine persuasion and turning away from heroism. But we see from "Thua ET on 6.405, 'YPruf>•r<Ws, 'like a picture': Eustath. 655·5• on 6.467 tl.s lv ypru/mcfi Or/Jc&, 'aa if painted in a picture': XT on u.Bo, Hecuba on the wall, 1C&-V1JT&Kdv 1eal ypa.tfmcOv Td ariJ&G, 'the 1cenc is moving and pictorial• etc., Helen's contempt for Paris and Andromache's love for Hector that what a woman really wants in a man is the strength to resist her and go out among the flying spears. Andromache brings her child to watch Hector; we have seen that his presence marks the union of his parents as different from that of Paris and Helen. He is too young to speak, but by being there he gives the dialogue its colouring, from Andromache's opening words, 'Have pity on your baby son and on me ••• ' to Hector's doomed prayer that his son may be a greater warrior than his father; and above all in that touching moment when Hector goes to take th~ baby, who is frightened by his father's grim helmet." The fathet puts off the helmet, and the parents smile at each other across the child. This enables them to feel in harmony again and is immediately recognizable as human,'" but we must also see more in it. The function nf armour is to terrify, a point I shall make at length, but not to terrify one's own children, so that from one point of view we can see Homer here turning a regular and constant feature of heroic verse into something human and unexpected; and, more specifically, putting to a new use the regular formulaic title-'Hector nf the flashing helmet', t<opv8alo>.o •• From another, we see that the Hector who carries out a man's task of defending his wife and child must, in doing so, become alien and terrifying to his own son," as all things are changed from what they were 'beforetime, in peace, before the sons of the Achaeans came'. Another significant moment has been devised by the poet in the encounter between Hector and Paris. Leaving his mother, 'Hector beloved by Zeus came into Paris' house. In his hand he held his spear, eleven cubits in length, and before him shone the brazen point of the spear, and round the spear ran a golden ring. He found Paris in his bedroom busy with his splendid armour, his shield and breastplate, and polishing his curved bow, while Argive Helen sat among her maidservants and gave 6 E. Bethc comments on the 1cenct in Book 6: 'Dieaer Dichter hat mehr gcwollt, ala nur erzihlcn ... Alles, waa eli~ Mezucben tun und aagcn, ihr Gang, ihrc Tracht, ihr Haw ••• ist Auadruck ihra W..,.na• (Homn, 1,236). Cf. abo C. A. Trypanis, Tlw Homni< Epi<s (1977), 66. •• Schadcwaldt, Yon Homn1 W1l1 unJ W11k, 4 212 fl'. Hecuba, 6. 1158; Helen, 6.354; Andromache, 6.431. ' u 'Have pity', 6.408; Hector's prayer, 6..4-76. On this scene, H. Herter in (1913), 157 ff. 11 L'b in 6.468, ).apdJv To£h-o liC TOO f3lov d 7T0&1]n)S Cf.KpWf 7TEpl.f.ylt~ero T'ijf Gra~tr B4ilr4g4, J I''P.~O'Eror, 'the poet took this from life.' u J. M. Redfield, }laiUTI turd Culture in lhe Iliad, Bi13· Inter_esting reaervatiom on ltopu9alo~or : J. B. Hainsworth in Homn: Trad~iJm and lnD<nliDn, ed. B. C. Fenik (1978), 47·

I 8 SYMBOLIC SCENES AND SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS them instructions for their work' (6.318-3114). The scene is again a symbolic one. •• Hector's coming is preceded by ~he gleam of his great spear-the true warrior comes; he finds Paris not in a respectable part of the house but in his boudoir among the female servants, among whom he is showing off his weapons and putting an even greater shine on them. The nature of the two men is brought out clearly. The scholiasts, with their sharp eye for such points, saw all this: 'As an example and in· citement to Paris Hector appears in a martial light, giving advance notice of his coming by means of his spear,' they observe; and of Paris, 'He is represented as a fop, showing off to his wife and, one might almost say, owning weapons merely for show. And again he is not even in the courtyard but among the maids.' 01 Again we find the same skill at using objects-the spear of Hector, the armour of Paris-to underline the significance of events; the technique is in fact here capable of making two contrasting points by means of what is at bottom the same thing-the weapons of the warrior. We shall be returning to this. We now leave this scene in Book 6, but not before o b· serving that its function is carried through to the end. The scholiast comments: 'We can see the two characters contrasted with each other: while Hector gives precedence to assisting his countrymen rather than to pleasure, Paris is sitting beside Helen.'•• The scene from Book 6 has been handled at some length. We have seen that in a scene which ceriainly was in antiquity recognized as symbolic (a reassuring check that we are not importing anachronistic subtleties), Homer made regular and effective use of the significant power of situations and of objects. We see him doing this in a scene which exists in order to bring out the nature of Troy and of the Trojan war ;•• this "H. Schrade, G6Un 11111/ Mmsdrln H....,s, 244. 11 EbT in 6.srg, 1rpds &rroypap.p.ov ~..! wpwp"'!'Vv 11.<Cc!vSpov 6paa~s ~vera& •Eit'rwp 8rd '1'00 86pa.Tos wpop.1JVI1wv -nl•lf4•Cw. EbT in 6.301 'I'OV l<a..w1nO'M)v 81j.of 1<al ba.flt!VVOp.<vov Tfl )'Wil.IKI 1<al p.&vov ~.dxl 1rop.mjs x&,>w "'"""',U.ov -nl• al(•inl•· d..ws •• od8l b Tfl d.fi Ja.w dMd b ,.,laa•s 'I'd< lpiDo•s. u L'bT in 6.390 ••• 1<..! la..1v 18rw dwiK<Ip.oa 1rpOaW1ra, •EKTopos .,a p.w 1rpt>Tip.>jaawos •wv .j81wv -n}v f3o>j6<14v .,,;;. wo.1'1'wv, 11.•Cc!vBpov 8l Tfl 'EAI"ff""'P"""'U.,,.,Ivou. • By contrast. P. Vivantc in CQ. 25 ( 1975), 11 : cThe di'.Ala docs not subaerve the action ... , SYMBOLIC SCENES AND SIGNIFICANT O~JECTS 9 Paris, glamorous and frivolous, is the man to have chosen pleasure in the Judgement of the three goddesses, and so to have brought on Troy the destructive anger of Hera and Athena." Indirect means are thus used to make points of great importance to the poem, and the audience, it is assumed, will understand. Methodically, we can now advance to apply this sort of interpretation to other passages. In the second book, Agamemnon is deceived by a lying dream sent by Zeus. He summons the Achaean army en masse, and attempts to excite their martial ardour by an ill-advised stratagem: he will counsel despair and flight, while the other commanders are to urge them on. The effect aimed at is presumably that of making the army reject with indignation the idea of returning in disgrace from an enemy so much fewer in numbers, a point laboured by Agamemnon in his discouraging speech (2.122-30); but in fact the troops are overwhelmed with joy at the thought of going home and rush in chaotic tumult for the ships. Agamemnon, who has failed to predict this outcome, is unable to do anything to stop it. Now, when Agamemnon appeared to make his speech he is described in these terms: Up rose mighty Agamemnon holding the sceptre which Hephaestus had toiled to make. Hephaestus gave it to the Lord Zeus, son of Cronos; Zew gave it to Hermes the Messenger, Argus-slayer; and the Lord Hermes gave it to Pelop.s, driver of hones, who in tum gave it to Atrew. shepherd of the people. Atreus at death left it to wealthy Thyestes, and he left it to Agamemnon to bear, to rule over inany islands and all Argos. Leaning on that sceptre he spoke to the Argives ••• We have already heard that as soon as Agamemnon had woken from his deceptive dream, he dressed and picked up 'his ancestral sceptre, an everlasting possession' (2.46). This sceptre, then, is heavily emphasized; what is the point? As in armingscenes (see below, p. 361£.), we expect something singled out in advance for mention to have a role to play. First, it is reasonable to suppose that the origin of the sceptre is significant. It comes from Zeus, and when Zeus gives the sceptre to a king, he gives him honour and privilege: Nestor told Achilles not to struggle with Agamemnon, 'for he has incomparably greater honour, a sceptred king to whom Zeus gives glory' (1.278). The idea was an ancient one. In the great empires of the Near East, rulers 11 5·24-67, r8.gs8, 2o.:JI:J-•7·

I to SYMBOLIC SCENES AND SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS SYMBOLIC SCENES AND SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS claimed to have been given their sceptre by the supreme god.•• Now, at this moment of the Iliad we know that Zeus, on whom Agamemnon relies (1.174• 'I have others who will honour me, and above all Zeus the Counsellor'), is planning to humiliate and deceive him. The god who gave him the sceptre which marks his power is also the god who has just sent him the lying dream. There is therefore a grim irony in the emphasis on Zeus as the source of his position ;•• he leanil on the symbol of king· ship which has already been undermined. Again, when his plan has failed, the Achaeans are racing for the ships, and it seems that Troy will not fall after all, Aga· memnon looks on helplessly; inspired by Athena, Odysseus acts. 'He came up to Agamemnon son of Atreus and took from him his ancestral sceptre, an everlasting possession'; with the sceptre he hits those of low rank who are urging flight, with it he thrashes the insubordinate Thersites, and holding it he makes the speech which restores morale and is greeted with cheers by the army. The significance is clear: this is how to be a king,17 and Agamemnon's failure in the role is symbolized in the treatment of that inherently significant object, the royal sceptre. The point is confirmed for us in Book 9 and Book 14. Thoroughly disheartened by defeat, Agamemnon twice pro• poses-without hidden intention-that the Achaeans should sail home. On each occasion he is rebuked, and the situation is restored, by firm speeches, one by Diomede, the other by Odysseus. In Book 9 Diomede tells the king that Zeus has given him the sceptre to be honoured above all others, but has not given him courage; in Book 14 Odysseus says that 'no sceptred king with so many subjects' should have brought himself to make such a speech. We see how both speakers find it natural to speak of the sceptre, and to contrast Agamemnon's possession of it with his inadequacy as a king. Again, as with the armour of Paris and Hector, the point illuminated here by the poet is an absolutely central one to the Iliad. The troubles and disasters of Agamemnon arise from his position; he is supreme (has the sceptre), but he is not the greatest hero. That situation is unstable and leads to his quarrel with Achilles. Homer uses the sceptre to underline it. •• Another function of a sceptre-not the unique inherited one of Agamemnon-is to represent the authority of the com· munity.•• Heralds hold them, so do ambassadors and speakers who 'have the floor' at public assemblies. This enables the poet to make another kind of striking and symbolic gesture. When Achilles in the quarrel wishes to make the most powerful possible statement of his refusal to go on fighting for the Achaeans, he says, 'I will speak out and swear a great oath to it: I swear by this sceptre, which will never grow leaves and twigs, since it has been cut in the hills ••• now among the sons of the Achaeans judges bear it in their hands, they who defend the ordinances established by Zeus; that will be a mighty oath: there will be a time when the sons of the Achaeans, all of them, will feel the absence of Achilles •• .' (1.233 f.) When he has finished this passionate oath, in which six lines describe the history of the sceptre before Achilles reveals what it is that he is about to swear by it-a powerful device of emphasis-he flings the sceptre to the ground, By doing so he gives vivid form to his rejection of his whole position among the Achaeans, The sceptre is to be held by those who administer justice: he is suffering injustice. It is the symbol of the community and its "Tbw Allur-Niair-Pal of Allyrla: 'When I bad seated m~ upon the royal throne in might, and when Allur bad placed in my band the J<eplre which rules the peoples , , .' (Luckenbill, lln<iml illt<Jrds 'If Asgria IJJld Bab~r..iR, I (1ga6), 141); at Babylon, .dNE'P, 332.a43, 'Marduk •• , who turns over the pure sceptre to the king who revet'CI.bim., .'; cf. Dirlmeier in PAUol. go (1935), 75· 'Le aceptrl: n'est pas ~eulementle aigne, maillle aiqc d'une force religieuac': L. Gemett 4Droit et pr&troit en Gr«:e anclennc', Andlmpologil d1 Ia C,J(, dlltiglll, !ZOS, with reference to L. Deubner,IIRW 30 (1993), 83ft'. See alao F.J. M. de Wade, Till M1J8ir Stqff ., &d (Nijmegen, 19l7), and A. AIRIIdi in IIJII 63 (1959), 15 If., L. A. Stella, Tradido111"""""' • poui4 diU' RiiMII (1978), M ft'. 11 F. Jacoby, SB B~rlin, 193•·58g - Kllinllkllrjfhn, 1·74> speaka of 'certainly conacioua contrast' between the atately introduction of Agamemnon here, and the mortifying role be il to play. " 0.186, 199, 265, 079, K. Reinhard~ Dilllilu und iAr Di&Jrur, • 13. G. Gaebnitzer, on the other band (Stodim...., llnli.Wn Epos; ed. Gargemanna, &-12), tbinb the 'reactionary' poet of Book ola concerned to •how Agamemnon as a long-catabllabed ruler, and Od,..eua aa acting .rub auspiriU "Pl hut it we arc to read poems to e~:tr&.ct political messages, we muat allow for the natW'C of poetic logic:. Codino, JnlrodudoM, 86, tbinb that in Odyueua' hands 'the sceptre becomes a mere aingle club.' II 11 Adam Parry pointed out that even the way_the two men are named, in Iliad 1.7-JITp</&qs « dvaf ci.Spwv Kal8l'os Jlx&MoJs-brin1J71 out the same point: Agamemnon is 'lord of men', defined by bill position; Achilles ill *god-like', defined by hla nature: HSCP 76 ( 1972), •· . •• G. Firuder, Hom~, r.aog: lllml 1~8, g.!2:t8, 7·277, tB.sos, !2::J.s67· L. Gernet Antllropologil dt Ia Gtk1 t~~nliqu•, 239-41•

I 10 SYMBOLIC S.CENES AND SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS SYMBOLIC SCENES AND SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS sanctities: he rejects the community and withdraws from it to his own ships. All that is clearly intended by Achilles in the choice of such a gesture, made possible by the existence of an object charged with symbolic force. The Odyssey provides an example of a scene parallel yet characteristically different, Young Telemachus, aroused by Athena, takes action at last against the Suitors and summons an assembly on Ithaca, the first for twenty years. He sits in his father's seat, and the elders make way for him (ii.14)-a line heavy with meaning; the prince gives visible sign that he is claiming the .position of his father the King. He makes his speech, calling on the Suitors to get out of his house, and on the community to condemn them. At the end 'he flung the sceptre to the ground, bursting into tears; and all the people felt pity for him.' Already in antiquity this scene was contrasted with that of Achilles." In the Iliad, the dire threat of a mighty hero, who has been assured already by Athena that he will prevail over Agamemnon; in the Odyssey, a very young man, trying to assert himself for the first time, in a hopeless position. The tears ofTelemachus contrast with the passionate self-confidence of Achilles, and the effect in the Odyssey is softer, almost sentimental-but still in its own way effective; and helping to show the range of use such physical objects could serve. I give some more examples from the Odyssey. When Odysseus first catches sight of his house, to which after twenty years he is returning disguised as a beggar, he takes Eumaeus' hand and says, 'Eumaeus, in truth this is the fine house of Odysseus; it can easily be recognized •• .' He goes on to dwell upon its details, concluding that 'Many men are keeping revel within, for I smell the meat and hear the music of the lyre.' The pathos of his return, where the hero must still control his heart even in sight of the home he has longed for, allowing himself only to catch at his companion's hand, is delicately expressed (xvii. 260 ff.). Very similar is the famous episode of the dog Argus. The loyal dog, thrown out to die on the dunghill because his master is away, gives a symbolic vignette of the meaning of his absence; and again the pathetic effect comes closer to sentimentality than is ever allowed in the Iliad (xvii.2go ff.). On a larger scale, both the Bow and Bed of Odysseus are used for this sort of effect, When the bow is brought out, first Penelope sits down and weeps over it, then the loyal retainers weep at the sight of the master's bow (xxi•55• 82); we recognize the same sensibility. The bed, of which Telemachus when he envisages his mother's remarriage asks whether it is 'covered with cob· webs', turns into the vital key which allows husband and wife to find each other at last. Odysseus built it, as part of his house; unmoved and unrevealed to any outsiders, it embodies the solidity and wholeness of their union (xvi.35, xxiii.177 ff.). In the Iliad, a contrast of a different sort is achieved when the Trojans have won their first successes. When the sun has set, withtheAchaeans in full retreat, Hector ad.dresses the assembled Trojan forces out on the battlefield, 'in a clear spot, where the ground was clear of corpses' (8.491): 'In his hand he held a spear eleven cubits long ••• Leaning on the spear he addressed the Trojans •• .' We remember that in the second book Agamemnon spoke leaning on his sceptre; in this deadly setting Hector uses not the symbol of civil order but the spear, the symbol of bare military force. 'It is effective that he speaks not holding a sceptre but the symbol of valour', the scholiast perceptively comments, 81 and his speech is not one of advice and counsel but consists of military orders, which are carried out at once, without any reply. As well as the use of a spear instead of a sceptre, the setting or the attitude of an assembly can in· terpret its mood and purpose. The Trojans in the eighth book meet out on the battlefield because they are beleaguering the Achaeans in their camp and watching that they do not sail away in the night; the poet of Book 10, the Doloneia, exaggerates this motif in harmony with his general liking for gruesome and bizarre effects, •• and makes the Achaean chieftains get up in the middle of the night and leave their fortified camp, in order to hold a meeting of the general staff 'in a clear spot, where the ground was clear of corpses falling [sic],'" the place where mighty Hector turned back from his slaughter of the Argives' (Io,Igg). What was straightforward has become eerie, at- 10 EbT in 1.945, and cf. R. von Sc:hcliha, Potroklot, 184. 13 " l:b in 8·1.94•."~wsodatdj111'pov ""~'x•w~I'''IY•P•f d.u~a '"i• cl.Bpolas '"ll"i<>11po/Ja.MOI'rvos: Reinhardt, Dil Ri4s und i/lt DU:lokr, 180. 11 F. Klingner, H11m1s, 75 (1940~, 37 = Slwiim DJr gr. und r6m. LillrDtur, 7"39· "~#pov 8' lK8UJ{Jd~cs dpu a..~..w·~· x/lJpos 111•m&~wv· d.U~. ltpyifous. a; v l8puiw~o !lv tca9o.p<jl, o9• vctcJwv J ....J.r.. dveTpdtru' o{Jp•p.o• EtcTwpl

I 14 SYMBOLIC SCENES AND SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS mospheric, chosen for its own sake; why should the Achaean leaders leave their camp in order to meet in such a place? When Achilles has made his appearance and threatens to return to battle, an assembly of Trojans is held, 'and they gathered for the assembly before they thought of dinner; and the assembly was held all standing, nor did any man dare to sit down • , ,• (18.245). Their position, their indifference to food, characterize their mood and state. · The motif of 'food' is constantly used by the poet to make effects of will and symbolism. These are sometimes missed by modern scholars. First, there is the use of food to embody the ·idea of honour. Sarpedon, in his great speech to Glaucus on the theme of noblesse oblige, begins by saying 'Glaucus, why are we honoured especially with seats of honour and meat and full cups of wine in Lycia? ••• That is why we must stand in the front rank of the Lycians and meet the flame of war, so that the Lycian infantrymen may say, "They are not ignoble rulers, our Ly~ian kings,.eating the fat sheep and drinking choice wine; no, theu valour Js good, they fight in the front rank among the Lycians"' (12.310-21). So too Hector insults the retreating Diomede: 'Son of Tydeus, the Achaeans honoured you with seats of honour and meat and cups full of wine, but now they will dishonour you ••• ', while Agamemnon calls on Idomeneus to bestir himself, saying that he has always honoured him in war and at the feast, where his cup has always stood by him full, 'as it does for me, to drink when heart bids' (4.277-62), and on the Athenian leaders with the words, 'You are the first to hear of a banquet from me' (4343)." It is worth remembering that in the old Theban epic Oedipus cursed his sons because they sent him the less honourable cut of meat, and so doomed them to death; later Greek thought, less instinctively in tune with such symbolic gestures, regarded this as a most inadequate motive, •• and indeed I think the Homeric poets would have "This ia a very common motif in Germanic epics; for .imtance B1owulf, g:6os. NibllungmlUd, 34-t 'Etzel should never show them favour again', said Volker. '1 can ace !hem here in crowd! ahaking at the knea, thoac who cat their prince's bread so dUgracefuUy and now leave hJm in the lurch .••' Pcnian grandees were paid by the Great King in food: D. M. Lewio, S}IITia ond Ptrsia (1977), 4 ff., cf. Tac., 14·4> .puJ.. ••• pro sli/lmdio ttdlmt. " 1Mbais, fr. 3 Allen; E in Sopb. O.C. 1375 •.• d 8~ft'"Po>{~Jxws "'" T<Mws 0 c,., cly..WS &p.wS yow clpd.s l8CTo 1<<1T a!Wwv 86fas o:l.oywpr'MJao, SYMBOLIC SCENES AND SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS 15 been reluctant to make such a point the fulcrum for a great movement of the plot, although the idea of more honourable cuts of meat was quite familiar to them.•• Thus we see that food is a tangible form of honour; as an ancient commentator observes, 'What he is talking about is not food but honour.'"' Possessions, too, are inseparable from the idea of 'honour', and indeed the word 'honour' is often used to mean simply 'gifts' or 'possessions'. •• But more interestingly the eating of food is used to embody moral values. We often find in early literature the motif of fasting. Saul vowed that Israel would fast during a battle, with disastrous results; all Siegfried's followers fasted after his murder; and so on.•• Especially is this common after a death. Achilles, in Book 19, refuses to eat before entering battle, and tries to prevent the rest of the Achaean army from eating. The sensible Odysseus points out, sensibly, that it is better to have a meal before going into battle, and in the end everybody eats except Achilles, who is given supernatural nouriShment by Athena. Denys Page•• waxes merry about this ('more than 18o lines have now passed since luncheon stole the limelight'), but I think we need .. e.g, 7•3l:U, viii.476, ix.a6o, 550, In the Irish F1is Tig• Brierenn a quarrel il deliberately atirted up between three heroes over the question who should have the portion reserved for the best champion; a masculine venion of the Eris·applc. See E. Knott and G. Murphy, Ea•/11rish Litnalu" (1g66), 119. Text is published with Englisb tram. as Irish T1d S«Uf1, 2 (18gg). 'The introduction to the volume refcn to the welt-known fragment of Pmidonius ap. Athen. 154 b = 87 FGH t6, on fights to the death at dinner among the Celts over the most honourable cut of meat. " ET in 4·343• od 77<pl {Jpwp.J.Twv .!Mel 77<pl TIJ';j• d :1.6yos. •• For instance, 9·155 = .9·297t ot Nl J 8WTlvna~ BE~II enS' Ttp:r]aovac.: g.6oll, d..' J..l8we_wv jlpx•o· laov ydp a• 8rtjl T<laouaw .11xa<ol. 15.18g, Tp<x8cl 8~ 77UI'T<l 8~"'""'· lK<lO'TOS lp.p.op• T<p.;js. M. I. Finley, TM ld qf Ody.sstW, 140 ff. Even in a context of deep pathos tbc poet thinks to add to the grief of a bereaved father by saying that 'distant kinsmen divided his estate', 5·158. "1 Sam. 14:04 ff., Nibdwwmlild § 17; cf. E. Samter, Ho""' (= Yolkskund• im a/tsproeMklun Untmi&hl, I (1903) ), 116 ff., who gives other parallels. 4' Histtny tUJd tilt Honvri& Diad, 314. So too G. S. Kirk, Songs of Honur, 36o: 'The tiresome arguments about whether Achilles will or wm not take any food ...' A more perceptive dhcwsion: W. Schadewaldt, llitustud'tltl, 133· Odysseus, who also does not understand Achillea, is a great one for pressing the urgent claims of the belly in the Od,YSS!I, xvii.473, xviii.53· J. Trumpf, StudUn z:.ur gril&hi.s&hln Lyrik (DW. Cologne, 1958), 8-24, makes interesting points on the significance of eating and drinking together in Greek and other Indo-European traditions, a· cr. w...

I 16 SYMBOLIC SCENES AND SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS only look to Book 24 to understand its purpose. In that book Achilles forces· Priam to eat with him before releasing to him the body of Hector. Achilles would not eat until he had slain Hector, and even after he reluctantly breaks his fast (23.43 ff.), he refuses to wash the blood from his body until the corpse of Patroclus is burned; he lies out on the beach, groaning, 'in a clear spot, where ~e waves were splashing on the beach',u till sleep comes on him. Even after the funeral games he cannot sleep and wanders about the beach alone (24 inil.), It is perfectly in line with this that he ignores the 'enormous presents' which Agamemnon gives him as compensation in Book 19, telling him only to produce them, or. to keep them himself, if he likes (19.147); he is still unreconciled, and avoids eating with his opponent. Eating together is a universal mark of union, creating a bond. •• Poor Lycaon vainly pleads for his life on the ground that he has eaten, as a captive, in Achilles' house; Odysseus, in the Otfyssey, will not eat with Circe until she has delivered his companions from the swine-form into which she has trans· formed them. Nursing his revenge and full of hatred, Achilles will not honour this universal custom, until the last book of resolution, where the hero who 'has destroyed pity' and who 'has a disposition as savage as a lion••• is finally seen in the poignant tableau where Priam kneels to kiss his hands, and rises to the occasion. He treats his guest with courtesy and eats with him, then they gaze at each other and admire in each other the nobility and beauty which each possesses. •• This has given .the poet here a metaphor which enables Achilles to return to humanity before he meets his death. The fasting has been turned from a taboo or cult practice into an individual expression of Achilles' extreme grief; eating with old Priam resolves the passionate separateness of the hero, which it had a 13.61. This •wmeccuary' line is interestingly discuaaed by W. Elliger, Land.. sdujfl in ,;..Ais<lwr Di<J.tun,, 68. i1 Jr illuatration were needed, a nicely explicit Egyptian inac:ription. recordiog the briDging or a Hittite princeu to man')' Ralnesa II, AHET', 258: 'they ate aod dnuk togelher, being or one heart like brothen ••• ror peace and brotherhood were between them.• .. a1.75 If., "'S73 If. Lycaon, ••·75 If.; Circe, x.373 If.; Apollo on Achille~, R4-41"'4. "•4·6otlf., cf. H.j. Mette in Glou., 39 (1g61), 52. SYMBOLIC SCENES AND SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS 17. seemed that nothing would be able to end. •• Among the gods, too, the same symbolism is powerful. The angry scene in the first book, Hera nagging and Zeus threatening, is resolved as they feast together. In the last book, Thetis is summoned to Olympus to be told by Zeus that her son must giye up the body of Hector. As she enters, dressed in mourning, Athena makes way for her to sit next to Zeus, and Hera puts a golden goblet In her hand, and she drinks. Here we see her old opponents, the two goddesses against whose plans she intrigued in Book 1, make gestures of reconciliation, eloquent though silent. Mention of the golden goblet leads naturally to other golden cups which appear at significant moments. As Patroclus leaves Achilles to lead the Myrmidons, a heroic venture from which we know he will not return, Achilles goes into his hut; 'he opened the lid of a chest, handsome and ornate, which silver· footed Thetis had given him to take on his ship. She had stocked it weii with tunics, cloaks to keep out the wind, and soft rugs. Within there was an ornate cup; no other man drank sparkling wine from it, nor did he pour libations to any god but Father Zeus. This he took from the chest and cleansed with sulphur, then he rinsed it in fair flowing water •• .' He makes a libation from this cup and prays to Zeus for the safe return of Patroclus from battle. This is a turning-point in the plot. Patroclus will be killed, and that will dictate the rest of the action of the Iliad. Its importance is marked by the gesture, in u There il an intere!lting parallel in the &ng qf My Cid, the mo:st important Spanish medieval epic. I quote rrom the translation by W. S. Merwin (tg6g), § 62, p. 7•· The Cid oblige!J his captive, Couot Ramon, to eat; lOr two daya the Count. rel'we!l. Finally the Ud saya, 'Unleas you eat well, Count,fand to my rullsatisfaction, You will remain here,fwe shall not part rrom each other,' The count said: 'I will cat,/1 will eat with a will.' With those two knightafhe eata quickly. My Cid, sitting there watching,/ia well pleased, Becawe the Count Don Ramon/proved so expert a trencherman, 'Ir it please!! you. my Cid,fwe are ready to go; Tell them to give ua our beasb,fand we shall ride at once: I have not eaten so heartily/since I have been a count; The pleasure or that mealfwill not be rorgotten.' The Count is then given presents and released, unable to believe in the Cid'a generooity. This episode, charming and M!f as it is, shows how a motif developed by Homer into high tragedy can also be treated in a very different apiriL

I 18 SYMBOLIC SCENES AND SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS SYMBOLIC SCENES AND SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS which we see again what looks like a regular cult act trans· formed into a pure expression of emotion" on the part of Achilles. The special cup, which exists only for this moment, marks the occasion as important, and also, as with the sceptre of Agamemnon in Book 2, has a bitterly ironical overtone, for Zeus, the god invoked and honoured with the precious cup, has already decided on Patroclus' death (15.65). Again the treasured human possession is used to·bring out the helplessness of man in the perspective, shared by the audience but not by the ciiaracters, of the will of Zeus. Nor do we fail to see the pathos of Thetis, the careful mother, packing for her doomed .son the human comforts of warm clothes; as with the house· keeping of Andromache, these garments are worth mentioning, even at the highest points of an epic poem, because the poet relies on his audience to understand that they are not mere items on a laundry list but the vehicles of profound emotion. From studying such unobtrusive touciies we gain an insight into the Homeric achievement of emotion and pathos by means of an apparently objective style. •• Nestor, too, has a special cup, famous to us because it was at first thought to resemble a cup found by Schliemann in a shaft grave at Mycellae.•• It is embossed in gold, with four handles and two doves to each handle. We see him use it only in the scene in Book 11 where he is visited by Patroclus and applies all his skills to get him to induce Achilles to return to battle, or at the least to send his friend. Again this is a crucial scene, in which the susceptible Patroclus will be so much moved that he will beg to be allowed to fight. The wounded Eurypylus is in Nestor's tent, and a captive woman prepares for them a medicinal drink. The cup of Nestor, we are told, was such that another man could move it from the table only with difficulty; but old Nestor lifted it without effort. The idea is unexpected, as Nestor is old and often complains of his weakness, and Leaf proposed to delete the lines. No doubt their purpose is to linger a little longer on the cup and the moment of rest before the im- portant dialogue begins. Perhaps also they attempt to convey the idea of the importance of what Nestor is about to do: getting Patroclus into battle is the dpti1T<la, the heroic acliieve· ment, of Nestor in the Iliad, and before it he is given something analogous in function to the arming-scene whicii regularly precedes the great martial dp=•la of an ordinary hero. Finally, Priam has a treasured cup, given him by Thracians when he went on an embassy. 'It was a great treasure, but Priam did not hesitate to give it, so great was his anxiety to ransom his son.' It forms the climax of the list of rich offerings whicli Priam takes to Achilles to ransom the body of Hector, and it is a transparent means of showing the emotion of Priam. He parted with his most treasured possession to honour Hector. The way in which meals are described also has symbolic rather than nutritious interest. It was remarked in antiquity that heroes are shown eating nothing but roast beef," the most heroic of foods; camped by the 'Hellespont rich in fish', they never turn to fish as an item of diet. Meals are never described with real truth to actual practice of life, and the point abo.ut them is the honour done to those present and the fairness of the division-'their hearts lacked for nothing in the evenly divided feast', we read constantly. Thus it is moral aspects which interest the poet, •• and their significance; these men were simple and heroic in their tastes, and they ate together like brothers. Nor is it only what the heroes eat which has significance; just as mucii attaches to what they do not eat. Repeatedly heroes are compared to wild beasts which are J.p.o~&yo•, eaters of raw flesh; the adjective in fact is only used in Homer in comparisons of warriors. Carrion birds and dogs who eat the bodies of the •• Gods feast, t.6ot; Thetis drinks, 24.100; Achillea' cup, t6.221, cf. R. von Scheliha, Patroklos, 26o. 11 See Ch. 4 on this question. •• e.g. G. S. Kirk, So"'/S qf Homn, ttl n.4. The cup: 11.632, cf, T. B. L. Webster, From Myc..., to Ho-, 33o A. Heubeck, Dil /uliMmch. Frog~, ooo, L. A. Stella, Trodi<ioM mimleo • po.sio tkU'J/imf, ( 1978), 39· Priam's cup, •4·•34• 19 n A lengthy discW!Iion of heroic diet, Athenaew ad init., cf. H. Strasburger~ SB Heidelberg, 1972, 28. Cf. also Shakespeare, Hmty V, Act 111, Scene vii, •Give them great meals of beef and iron and steel, they will eat like wolves and fight like devils!-•Ay, but these English are shrewdly out of beef'. ao A. Roemer, Htn118riseh1 Arifslilo, 123 n. 1; H. Fr.ll.nkel, Diehtung und Philosophi1, 31. •wahrscheinUchkeit im naturalistischen Sinn ist nicht homerisch', observes G. Firuler, Homer t.320, and tUberhaupt ist aUes Sachliche dem poedschen Bednrfnis durchaus untergcordnet', 1.306. od8l n Uup.or lli<lf<TD 8atTO• liUfJ•• ., • • • _, • • • • _, t.4fi8 etc. ""b T'1D Jg,!l~I, 'TOUOVTOV £ !S' apE"??V 0• 11'0&.'1}-, 'IS opq., OT& Nalo -,'IV dvayl<alav 'Tpo¢>~· 1'0.""1• Zv<I<O. 11poa¢>lp<a0a/ 'f>7JUW: 'the poet looks s

SparkNotes: The Iliad: Suggestions for Further Reading

A suggested list of literary criticism on Homer's The Iliad. ... to Homer. Oxford: Oxford University Press ... Griffin, Jasper. Homer on Life and Death.Read more

Homer on life and death (Book, 1983) [WorldCat.org]

Homer on life and death. [Jasper Griffin] ... New York : Oxford University Press, 1983. Edition/Format: ... " Homer on life and death "@en:Read more

CiNii Books Author - Griffin, Jasper

compiled by Jasper Griffin. Oxford University Press 1982 Small Oxford ... Homer on life and death. Jasper Griffin. Clarendon Press , Oxford University ...Read more

Homer on Life and Death by Jasper Griffin | 9780198140269 ...

... Oxford University Press, USA; Homer on Life and Death by; Jasper Griffin; ... and that Homer embodies a view of the world both unique and profound. ...Read more

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